Members of the community pictured at the colourful Māngere Town Centre. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Members of the community pictured at the colourful Māngere Town Centre. Photo / Jason Oxenham
One of South Auckland’s biggest electorates with a high Pasifika population has long been seen as Labour Party territory.
The Māngere electorate has a number of interesting statistics linked to it, with Pacific peoples making up almost 60 per cent of the 73,149 people who call it home, according to the 2018 Census.
A large majority of that population (60.8 per cent) identified as being Christian and among other electorates, Māngere was ranked first for the highest proportion of people who spoke Samoan (18.6 per cent).
Long-time Māngere MP and former Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, who announced his retirement earlier this year, was a big driver of that public support and has long been a respected matai (chief) and community leader within the Samoan, Pacific, Māngere and wider South Auckland communities.
Sio held the Māngere seat for 15 years. There were others before him - Labour MPs Taito Phillip Field, David Lange and Colin Moyle.
This election, the seven candidates running in the electorate show off just how diverse New Zealand is today and represent seven parties - Labour’s Lemauga Lydia Sosene, National’s Rosemary Bourke, Vision New Zealand’s Fuiavailili Alailima, Act’s Pothen Joseph, Te Pāti Māori’s Hilda Peters, the Green Party’s Peter Sykes and independent candidate Brooke Pao Stanley.
In the 2020 election, the clear winner was Sio, reeling in 77.1 per cent (23,104) of the 29,982 valid votes cast. The nearest candidate was National’s Agnes Loheni, who captured 3,708 (12.4 per cent) of the votes, while the Green Party’s Peter Sykes brought in 1,930 (6.4 per cent) of votes.
Sosene and Bourke represent the two main political parties, Labour and National, respectively.
Although they are on opposing sides, they share a number of similarities. They are both Pacific women whose migrant parents wanted the best for their children and the community they live in.
The pathway to leadership
Māngere-Ōtāhuhu local board chair Lemauga Lydia Sosene said the way the council gathered feedback often did not take into account the cultural diversity of her area. Photo / RNZ
Lemauga Lydia Sosene’s opening statement on the Labour Party website is a well-known Samoan proverb.
“O le ala i le pule o le tautua.” The pathway to leadership is through service.
Sosene is no stranger to service, having served the local community in various forms, including as a member and then chair of the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board, for many years.
But before that, she was serving the community through the work established by her parents, who were the first church leaders at the Ōtara Ekalesia Fa’apotopotoga Kerisiano i Samoa (Congregational Christian Church of Samoa) and later at the Papatoetoe E.F.K.S. church in the early 1970s.
“That’s my upbringing,” Sosene said. “Because my parents pastored that church, my service has been from that as a kid growing up in a village.
“I hadn’t counted on stepping into politics because I was always doing community service right from the get-go... and pretty much entrenched in Samoan village lifestyle - you’re just part of the kitchen sink.
“I found that community service resonated with me very well. I was very familiar with the issues.”
Her father, Reverend Ofisa Nu’uali’itia, had always been a strong advocate for families who came through the door seeking immigration assistance, housing assistance and even refuge during the Dawn Raids era.
As a result, she has always had a good understanding of what families go through, Sosene says.
“In my view, I have served the community. I come from this community and have lived in Māngere for over 20 years.
“I’m seeing what I’m seeing on the ground and my values resonate with Labour Party; because other political parties I see don’t understand our Pacific communities, don’t understand some of the issues on the ground.”
Former Minister for Pacific Peoples and Māngere MP Aupito William Sio gives his valedictory speech at Parliament in August. Photo / Marty Melville
Sosene talks about Covid-19, particularly when it was starting to affect the Pacific community and specifically those in the Māngere and wider South Auckland and West Auckland communities.
As the chair of the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board, she was among those on the ground helping the community during lockdown. It was the Pacific leaders and community members that stood up strong during that time, she says.
Like many Pasifika families then, her household included people who worked in essential jobs as frontline staff, who needed to be extra careful due to having a vulnerable or elderly person at home.
“Some of our young people couldn’t go back to school because they were helping mum and dad. Some have come back into the system and go on to tertiary. Others have chosen to stay and work and help mum and dad out.
“We had a system where all of our members on the local board were connected into the groups. We wanted to know how our old people were, especially the seniors who lived alone or just had two of them. So we had intel into all of the villages and trying to work with those systems.”
Sosene acknowledged the work of Sio and the weight of following in his footsteps.
“It’s massive shoes. I will say Aupito is always in his masterclass and I’m probably still at primary school level because it’s not just about the knowledge about the systems and the infrastructure and the huge departments that we work with, but it’s also his status as Sa’o (head chief) of the family, the cultural knowledge [and] the language.
“So it’s exciting but it’s also nerve-racking because I know the community’s saying: ‘Who are you’?”
Sosene emphasised the diversity within the Labour Party and particularly its representation of the Pacific Island communities, both in its representation within the caucus and its policies.
“It is a very stark view when you look at Pasifika in Parliament and dedication of our programmes and the dedication of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.”
Sosene says she still hears the words of her parents, who have passed on.
“Their one mantra was to serve the community with what you have. You just have to do the best you can - and that’s what I aim to do. I’ve been with public service now for over three decades. I aim to help our community.”
Humble beginnings, a want for a better future
Rosemary Bourke is the National Party candidate for Māngere.
Rosemary Bourke is fighting from the National Party blue corner and comes from a very similar background to that of many other New Zealand-born Pacific Islanders.
She was born to migrant parents - her father from Neiafu in Vava’u, Tonga, and her mother from Mulifanua in Samoa - who travelled to the land of milk and honey in the 1960s.
“My parents came here like many... because they knew there was another opportunity for them and there was an opportunity to work and help their families back in the islands.”
Like many families just starting out, Bourke speaks of humble beginnings, hard jobs and the will to create a better future for their children and wider aiga (family).
“They’ve come here and they’ve worked in those factories and in hotel cleaning for years. My parents never saw it [as something] to look down on,” she says.
“It was a way up to help their family.”
Bourke’s parents had strong views on education and understood that getting a good education was the ticket to anywhere. She attended Auckland’s Marist College and her brother went to St Peter’s.
“They always knew that education was the next opportunity for their children - a way of giving back and also a way of growing and opening other doors for us.”
Later, she married, moved to South Auckland and had four children. She was later divorced and raised her children as a solo parent. “Life happens,” she says.
Bourke continued to work and pushed her children to finish school.
“Education was my way of saying: ‘Look, I’ll work and you guys must stay in school and do well’. That came from my parents and I encouraged them to finish school because school was going to be their door to other pathways.”
On entering politics, Bourke says one of the reasons she has put her hat in the ring is because she has come from a background of hard work and wants to see the potential in Māngere grow.
A Zumba class takes place in the Māngere Town Centre in October 2018. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“That’s my why. We need to improve in that relationship to help fill the gap there is between central government and your electorates and your communities. I understand being at grassroots. I still work in warehousing. I’m an administrator,” Bourke says.
“I understand why my parents and a lot of my family have voted for Labour. But that sense of change is there.
“People have struggled over the last six years under the Labour Government. My pitch is: look, I understand. I’m from working class, I work with a lot of people who are represented in working class in the company I work with and other jobs I’ve been in.”
Bourke says she knows what it is like to struggle and to have $20 left at the end of the week to divide between food, bills and petrol.
She also points out that although “everything” can be thrown at the 11th hour, she wanted people to vote for long-term promises - acknowledging Labour’s new immigration policy offering an amnesty visa to overstayers who have been in the country for more than 10 years announced just over two weeks ago.
“I was like: ‘Wow, if that’s what they’re saying, how are our people feeling with that? They’ve been waiting for a while and now they’re feeling... is this just because it’s election year?’ We’re not stupid.
“If it was just someone in the community, I’d be like: ‘Why now?’ A lot of people would’ve thought after the [Dawn Raids] apology that things would’ve moved faster. But it’s happening now, so I guess we’ll see where it takes them.”
On the issues in Māngere, Bourke points out the cost of living and housing as the big ones. Affordable rent is also key and making sure there are enough houses.
Asked to describe party leader Christopher Luxon, she says: “I know he’s the face and people look at him and go: ‘He’s this Pākehā man, he’s rich’... but he comes from parents who left school early and he’s just a normal guy. He’s funny, he cares about listening to people.”
